Blog

A Climate Tipping Point?

By September 11, 2015

This week we wanted to highlight an article by our funder friend Compton Foundation. This post was first published on their site September 10th.  “Yet all is not lost. Human beings, while capable of the worst, are also capable of rising above themselves, choosing again what is good, and making a new start.” Laudato Si…

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To Listen Much More Closely

By September 4, 2015

I appreciated Paul Shoemaker’s recent article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy entitled “How to Rebuild Philanthropy’s Ability to Change the World” so much that I stole one of the subtitles – Listen Much More Closely to Nonprofits. One of the first of many lessons I learned as a grant-maker from my Co-Executive Director, John, is…

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Can Black Lives Matter to Philanthropy?

By September 1, 2015

The original question in the title of this article (reposted below) is “Can Philanthropy Make Black Lives Matter?”  Our reaction at TWI is that philanthropy alone probably cannot wholesale shift hundreds of years of institutional racism and prevalent cultural attitudes.  That would take an intersectional, coordinated set of movements from all sectors.  We do believe…

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Taking Convening To Scale

By August 25, 2015

For the past ten years, TWI has explored bringing people together in authentic, unconferencey ways.   In early October, we are bringing together over one hundred partners for a weekend of “trust in practice.” As we turned our attention toward this convening, I reviewed the feedback and lessons learned from last time. I came across…

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12 Awesome Things Funders Do

By August 19, 2015

We at TWI are in full agreement with Vu Le‘s recent post about 12 Things Funders Do right.  In fact, many of the 12 show up on TWI’s own compendium of 9 Practices of Trust-based Investment.  In a side by side comparison, it’s clear that respect, transparency, partnering in a true spirit of service, feedback…

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